


nothing grows (when it is dark)

by DefinitionOfAWriter



Series: with all my faults [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F, Guess Who's Back, and being emo over costia, and this is sort of ~artsy~ btw idk, be nice to lexa, there's a lot of lexa being gay for clarke in this, this is sort of a lexa study that spans her life? i just love my heda so much??, what else is new though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-16
Updated: 2017-06-16
Packaged: 2018-11-14 18:12:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11213490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DefinitionOfAWriter/pseuds/DefinitionOfAWriter
Summary: A hollow leader led the 12 clans to a Golden Age for everyone but herself, and she forgot what warmth felt like in her chest.(Once there was a girl who forgot what love was, and the stars sent someone to remind her.)





	nothing grows (when it is dark)

**Author's Note:**

> This was first posted before Season 3 began. I took it down for various reasons and I've finally gotten around to reposting it. Hope you enjoy!

(Once upon a time, there was a girl who looked to the stars with wonder.)

 

She liked to tell stories back then.

There were entire days that she spent curled up in pelts and furs, reading worn books that had survived the great bombs. She whispered the faded words to herself in the dim light of the evening, bruised and tired but aglow with determination. The other children slept, but she kept training, chanting the stories of warrior women in her head as she battled the inanimate objects.

The moon and stars became as familiar to her as the sun, and she etched little stories into rocks when she thought no one was looking. The stars shone down on the carvings and cast shadows on the trees and she thought nothing had ever looked so beautiful.

Anya took her as her second, and she wanted more, she wanted it all. Dreams of leading her clan into battle like the great warrior queens plagued her every thought. She battled, she trained, people noticed her. Each mark on her back was a victory.

She grew, but she didn’t forget what inspired her in the first place.

 

(Once upon a time, there was a girl who smiled at the stars because she was a stranger to sorrow. This would not last.)

 

 

She met Costia in a trip to a nearby village, and she was oblivious to her trainer’s knowing amusement in the light of the girl’s soft smile and shy gaze. She was so wonderfully different, such a fresh experience in the world of brutality that she lived and breathed. Not to say that Costia could not defend herself - she watched the girl take down a mountain lion in a hunt, and she thought she fell in love at that moment.

Her lips tasted of herbs and the smokey flavor her kill had been coated in, and the forest lit up that evening under the night sky. They spent hours on the forest floor comparing clouds and debating politics and it was everything, everything, everything-

(She was so in love and she saw her future when she was by Costia’s side.)

Kisses flowed into more in the following weeks, and they fell in love as they fell into bed and even when Lexa returned to her village, they crept out to meet each other under the stars.

Until one day she didn’t show and a day turned into a week and the Azgeda sent a lovely message with one of Costia’s braids.

She had not known pain until then.

Hours bled into days and she did not feel time move. She kept the braid on her at all times and every time she began to smile, she felt its weight against her side and the joy died.

Tortured, they said. Beheaded, they said. People pointed at her and spoke of Costia when they thought she wasn’t looking and her lover’s family left their village and moved East without word. It was her fault, and everyone knew it, and even Anya didn’t deny it when she spoke the words aloud.

She burned her books that day.

 

(Once there was a girl who begged the sky for answers. Silence.)

 

 

Everyone had expected her to rise to a position of power, but no one thought it would be her to join all of the clans in a Coalition. Fierce battles were fought with the Ice Nation, and when they surrendered, peace flourished. The Azgeda were brought under control, and every time she saw one of their people, her fingers twitched with the urge to take revenge for Costia.

Leadership, she found, was different than she’d expected.

Glorious battles were really just pockets of loss and cause for mourning, and in between there was nothing but caution and exhaustion and a wish for something more.

She still woke up with a phantom woman in her arms, and sometimes she cried. Sometimes she could barely drag herself to meetings, and sometimes she saw someone with her hair or her chin and her heart would shatter all over again.

Months after the braid was sent to her, she stared at her trunk that had once been full of novels and marred rocks and she decided with a cold finality that love was weakness. Her chest was filled with clothes and swords and she forced herself to forget everything that had once been stuffed in its corners.

She did not cry over her lost love anymore, and when someone mentioned Costia, she did not blink. Everyone was kept at arm’s length, and she saw Anya watch her sometimes, waiting for some break down. None ever came.

A hollow leader led the 12 clans to a Golden Age for everyone but herself, and she forgot what warmth felt like in her chest.

 

(Once there was a girl who turned her back on the traitorous lights above her head, and the sky cried so hard one of its stars came loose and fell to the ground below.)

 

 

The sky fell and let strangers stumble out into their forests and she was truly at a loss of what to do.

Her stories came back to haunt her, not the ones on page but the ones whispered around campfires, of people who had shot themselves into space to escape the bombs. They were only children, and they were weak.

They would not survive long.

But then rockets were fired on a village and people died and the outcry was so large that she ordered an attack on the little place they had built for themselves. Anya’s new second died, and Lexa felt no pain, but a rage swelled in her gut. Another attack, and 300 of her people were gone, but so were the strangers, taken by the mountain men.

Anya was gone, and this death barely rocked her.

She was upset with the loss of her people, and a fire burned in her throat, but the personal grief was much less than it would’ve been two or three years ago.

She was changing, and she was mostly sure it was for the better.

(But sometimes she had doubts. Sometimes she hid her face under the blankets and wondered if she could still cry if she tried. Was she too far gone? Would Anya be disappointed in her?)

Her hesitations were always gone by the light of day.

 

(Once there was a girl who forgot what love was, and the stars sent someone to remind her.)

 

 

“You're the one who burned 300 of my warriors alive.”

She looks up, and she pauses. The girl before her is different than she expected - defiant, for one, with a determination that she recognized.

She had felt it in herself as a _yongon_. She wondered how she had managed to keep it in these weeks on the ground. It would have killed off the strongest person’s sense of spirit.

“You're the one who sent them there to kill us,” Clarke replies, and she has the strangest urge to smile. She sees herself from long ago, faded memories locked in blonde hair and eyes that sparked with thinly veiled fear.

The conversation about Anya’s rocks her more than her actual death did, and it has everything to do with the reminder in front of her. Used by the Mountain Men, Clarke says. Killed by her side, she says.

( _She should have died by my side,_ she thought. _She should have died by my side, just as I should have died by hers._ )

Peace agreements are made on the condition of one last act of violence, and she watches the hope slowly die in Clarke’s eyes. But blood must have blood, she told herself. The boy named Finn had to die.

He dies in a different way than she expects. It ends with blood on Clarke’s hands and a heaviness that hangs in her gaze when she looks away from her lover’s body.

It’s later that night that a story comes back to her, one that she had carved on a rock until the sun had bled colors into the sky. A story of a woman who killed the man she loved to save him from pain. A woman who lost so much but stayed true to herself and led her people to a brilliant victory.

She realizes something.

Clarke was more of a heroine than she had ever been, and she had done it all without losing her soul.

She does not sleep that night.

 

(Once there was a girl who peeked at the stars and thought to herself, _would if be so bad if… If._ )

 

 

The story of Costia spills out easier than she expects, and to speak of it all for the first time releases some of the tension in her heart. She thinks on Costia with a faint nostalgia now, and she thinks that this is progress, though towards what she isn’t sure. The pain never went away, but she is better at handling it.

Despite all her hesitations and her doubts, she tells Clarke what she has told herself for years. The words are met with denial, and she’s almost relieved that she has chosen a different path. Clarke struggles with the suggestion for a while, making decisions more aligned with hers but also taking emotional risks that she did not.

Days pass, full of traitors and adventures and plans and the day the _pauna_ attacks is the day she gives in to what she has denied to herself since the moment she saw the blonde in her tent, full of defiance and a brilliant light that had struck her to the core.

Their moments together are full of a feeling that she hasn’t felt since she had lost Costia. There is potential there.

Where she once pictured leading her people to greatness with Costia by her side, she now imagines taking off her war paint for a day and bundling up with the gorgeous blonde for a while, just to get a little peace.

She dreams of reading to her under the moonlight, curled in pelts and furs, telling her lover the history of her people - of their people. Of sleeping entwined until they rise to train the _yongons_ of the village, laughing and playing and not worrying about enemies in a mountain.

She dreams of finding her soul in Clarke, and never letting it go this time.

 

(Once upon a time there was a girl who stared at the skies and wondered if Costia would forgive her for finding someone else. There was silence once more, but in that silence she found her answer. The girl smiled.)

 

 

Sometimes, Clarke terrifies her. Sometimes she thinks that’s why she cares so much for her. But today she’s on a roll, and she still feels the pressure of the crate against her back from when Clarke had backed her into it.

( _Not everyone. Not you,_ she had said. And the blonde had drawn back, she had seen the connection there. _Message received,_ her face had said, and her heart had stuttered in reply. Her chest hadn’t righted itself since.)

And then she was there, and she was talking and she could barely hear over the pounding in her ears.

( _You say having feelings makes me weak, but you’re weak for hiding them._ The words had bounced around in her mind all day.They were far too similar to the doubts she had in the quiet of the night, and they had been wrapped up in a bow by the very girl that made her want to give it all up. Too much, too much, too much.)

She’s leaning forward before she can stop herself, and their lips meet in the softest of touches and the gentlest of promises. It is everything she wanted and yet not nearly enough - but enough for now, enough to loosen all of her muscles and put a few million flutters in her stomach.

( _Maybe life should be about more than surviving,_ Clarke had said, and she had taken that to heart. This was not surviving. This was living, this was thriving in the best of ways.)

She kissed Clarke and she knew peace.

The soft rebuttal did not hurt - Finn had died such a short time ago, and love had no place to bloom in the harsh winters of war. There would be time for that after, and when they exited the tent to stand before their people, side by side, there was a sweet sense of victory in her veins.

Stories opened up before her, tales of the great Heda and Skai Heda, the two warrior women who took down the terrors of the land with warriors but also with friends. She itched for a novel to read, and she promised herself to build a library in Polis when this was all over. A great building for people of all ages. They would learn how to make more books, and she would write her own stories for Clarke to read as they laid in bed together.

She thought Anya might like her decision for once.

The war had finally come to a head, and she had never felt more alive.

 

(Once upon a time a girl loved a girl who had come from the stars and held all of their beauty. Lexa did not need the skies anymore. They had given her Clarke.)

 

 

She hears that the Mountain Men are still destroyed without the help of the _Trikru_. All of them, every single one wiped out. No one is in contact with _Skaikru_ , and for good reason, but it causes disruption and tales among villagers. Rumors spread far and fast. One thing is decided - the great _Skai Heda_ was certainly behind it. She did nothing to stop this theory, because she was almost positive of the same.

Scouts reported hundreds of bodies being disposed of from within the mountain, but no one spots Clarke.

(She chokes on worry some days. She wonders if she has lost her second chance, and she wonders what Anya would say to her now.)

She had not slept a full night since her betrayal. Memories of Clarke’s face when she realized what happened- they plagued her.

( _Don’t do this._ Her voice had cracked. Her expression was much like her own when she received Costia’s braid. It cut her deeper than even she expected.)

She did not regret saving her people. She had thought with her head, not with her heart, and she fully supported that choice. She had told Clarke of her opinions, and she had a feeling that eventually, the blonde would understand, if she didn’t already.

But she didn’t tuck away her emotions, nor did she refuse to think about the starlit warrior who had snatched her heart away. She found the balance between her head and her heart and she tried to keep it there despite the weariness she felt when she came home to an empty bed.

(Patience. Patience.)

She collects all the books she can find, and she pours her energy into the new library with every free second she has. Her people help her, and together they build a structure worthy of the gods.

She pays an artist to paint the wood ceiling in the image of the night sky, but the walls are left blank. Those would be reserved for Clarke, who would fill them up with her own stories in the way she had done with her own rocks. She begins reading again. She covets blank papers and writes words on them in careful ink patterns. Some in English, some in Trigedaslang, but all of it about heroines better than she ever would be.

She sleeps in the library sometimes, curled up in blankets. In a rare moment or two, she feels every bit of the girl she had been over a decade ago, awake when the other children slept, and she thinks about Clarke.

Clarke would come back. Eventually, and not on the best of terms, but she would return.

That was a wait she could handle.

 

(Once upon a time, there was a girl who realized the stars did nothing but twinkle. Fate was nonexistent, and people gained what they earned. She planned on gaining much.)

 

(The stars twinkled on.)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! There is a sequel piece to this from Clarke's POV, but I wasn't sure if people would be interested. Let me know if you are...?


End file.
